Today we landed in Wollongong which is just south of Sydney. We took a shuttle bus into town and then hopped on the free bus which went around the city of Wollongong. There wasn't really that much of interest to see. They passed by the university, a botanic garden and drove around the streets of what is pretty much a fairly typical town. When we finished the bus tour, we walked down the main street and had a stickybeak in a few stores before heading back to the ship. Dad still wasn't feeling 100%, so we didn't want to do too much walking that day. The show that night was titled 'Piano Man' which was performed by the Royal Caribbean singers and dancers. The show featured the music of Billy Joel, Elton John, Barry Manilow and Ray Charles. This was a new group of singers and dancers and was their first time performing on this ship. They were pretty much what we have come to expect from a ship's singers and dancers - the main singers were pretty good, but the others were just okay and the dancers were okay.
The Wollongong Mission Uniting Church - built in 1882 - we saw this church as we were walking down the main street heading back to the shuttle bus which returned us to the ship - I love the fact that they left this beautiful old building alone when they built the two new modern buildings on either side of it
DAY 14 - Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Today's port was Newcastle which is just north of Sydney. We have been to Newcastle before - Dad worked there a few years ago and we did quite a bit of walking and sightseeing around the city at that time. However, our trivia friends, Ken and Katherine, offered to show Dad, me and our other trivia mate, Richard, around Newcastle, so we took them up on it. First, Dad arranged an Uber to get us up to the beginning of the Newcastle Memorial Walk. This is a clifftop walkway which was built to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli and to honour the men and women of the Hunter area who served their community and country in World War I. It's a beautiful walk overlooking the ocean on one side and the city on the other - it was a really lovely walk.
Another view of our ship docked in Newcastle
After enjoying the walk, we took another Uber down to Fort Scratchley - it was a former coastal defense installation built in 1882 to defend the city of Newcastle against a possible Russian attack and is now an interactive museum. The fort is normally closed on a Tuesday, but as our cruise ship was there for the day, the fort was opened specifically for cruise passengers to be able to tour it. We walked around the fort checking out the various buildings and reading about the history of the fort and what each building was used for - it was very interesting. After checking out inside the buildings, we walked around the grounds. When we came to the flag pole, we noticed that some people were trying to put up a Canadian flag. It turned out that a Canadian guy had brought with him from Canada an official Canadian flag which he had obtained from his member of Parliament. He asked one of the volunteers if they would raise his flag up the flag pole so that he could take a picture - that was a cool thing to happen on this day. 😃
The Time Gun at the fort
After we had toured the fort, we walked down to Nobby's Beach so that Richard could get a photo taken of him there and so we could all get a nice cool drink (I got an iced chocolate, of course! 😃 We decided to start walking back to the shuttle bus from the beach, but hadn't gone far when it was close to 1pm, so we stopped in a park where we could see the fort from. At 1pm, the volunteers fired the Time Gun (a cannon) indicating it was 1pm or 13:00 hours, with our ship's captain and other officials present at the fort. During cruise ship season, the guns are fired in salute on departure of the ships from Newcastle Harbour; generally three rounds are fired. This occured for us while we were in the middle of playing trivia.
Looking towards the lighthouse on Nobby's Head
Enjoying my iced chocolate 😃
Can you see the smoke from the firing of the Time Gun?
Dad's video of the firing of the Time Gun
After viewing the firing of the Time Gun, we continued our walk back to the ship.
A cool sculpture outside the Newcastle Museum - Constance the Camel - it represents the history and culture of migrants - it is made of metal and covered in rivets and bolts
My brownie with chocolate sauce - I got that to take back to the cabin each night starting about half way into the cruise - it was a delicious way to end each day 😄
On Wednesday, it was time to disembark from the ship and head home. Since we both had nasty coughs and hadn't felt 100%, especially Dad, we weren't too unhappy about getting off the ship this time. This was our seventh cruise and this was the first time that either one of us had felt under the weather on the ship - it's much nicer to be well when you are cruising. After waiting a very long time for the shuttle Dad had ordered, we FINALLY made it to the airport (in time, thankfully) and flew our two planes home to Hervey Bay arriving back to our house at about 6pm. It was good to be home! We spent the rest of this week resting up, drinking lots of water and just trying to get better. Our coughs were still noticeable today and so we didn't want to go to church and pass it on to anyone. We hope that we will be over this nastiness soon.
